WBNS-TV: История и развитие колумбийского телеканала 10

CBS affiliated television station in Columbus, Ohio

WBNS TV (channel 10) is a television station in Columbus, Ohio, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside the company's sole radio properties, WBNS (1460 AM) and WBNS FM (97.1). The stations share studios on Twin Rivers Drive west of Downtown Columbus, where WBNS TV's transmitter is also located. WBNS TV also serves as the CBS affiliate of record for the nearby Zanesville, Ohio, market. Before its purchase in August 2019 by Tegna, WBNS TV was the flagship station of founding owner Dispatch Broadcast Group, whose operations also included WTHR, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, and WALV CD, Indianapolis' MeTV outlet and an alternate NBC affiliate; all of Dispatch's stations are now with Tegna.

WBNS TV began operations on October 15, 1949. WBNS radio had been a CBS Radio Network affiliate for almost 20 years, so Channel 10 immediately joined the CBS television network. It is currently the ninth longest tenured CBS affiliate. Channel 10 has used the on air branding of 10TV since 1977. It is also one of only a few stations in the country to have had the same call letters and primary network affiliation throughout its history. The WBNS call letters stand for "Wolfe Bank Newspaper and Shoes", the businesses owned by the company's longtime owners, the Wolfe family. Channel 10 maintained common ownership with The Columbus Dispatch, the city's lone remaining daily newspaper and the "N" in the station's call letters, until 2015 under an exemption of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s cross ownership rules. The FCC has largely prohibited common ownership of co located print and broadcast media since the mid 1970s. The Wolfe family, who purchased the Dispatch in 1905, sold the newspaper and related assets to New Media Investment Group in June 2015. WBNS TV was known for its locally produced shows Flippo the Clown, Luci's Toyshop, Franz the Toymaker, The Judge, and programs hosted by popular Columbus Zoo and Aquarium personality Jack Hanna (Hanna's Ark). The station also featured "Fritz the Nite Owl," who hosted midnight movies during the 1970s, and the Sunday state government talk show called Capital Square in the 1990s. Throughout much of the 1990s and early years of the millennium, WBNS TV was home to the 10TV Kids News Network (KNN); a local show, "produced by kids, for kids." The half hour show aired Saturday mornings. Several KNN kids have gone on to pursue careers in television news or public relations in central Ohio.

In 1995, WBNS TV replaced Cleveland's WJW TV as the default affiliate in the Mansfield area (part of the Cleveland–Akron DMA) after WJW became a Fox broadcast outlet. The new Cleveland CBS affiliate, WOIO, unlike WBNS TV, did not reach Mansfield with a Grade B signal. WBNS also replaced Toledo CBS affiliate WTOL on cable television in the Lima DMA. The first live high definition broadcast on the station's digital signal took place in September 1998 in which the broadcast was a football game between Ohio State and West Virginia, making the station a pioneer in American digital television. The station claims this to have been the first locally produced HD broadcast in the U. S.; however, as several other stations throughout the country also lay claim to this distinction, the veracity cannot be verified. It is widely considered the first ever live sporting event in HD in the U. S. produced using a production truck and transmission vehicle from NHK, Japan's national public broadcasting organization. Working with sister company Radio Sound Network, WBNS TV, WBNS (AM) and Ohio News Network (ONN) produced and distributed on a Streaming media platform the Ohio State spring football game in 2001. It was one of the first live sporting events in the U. S. to be streamed. The game was delivered on RealVideo, a compressed video format, on the RealPlayer media player platform on the station's website. It also was distributed to Windows Mobile mobile devices using the Windows Media Player format, including Compaq's IPAQ personal digital assistant which required an ExpressCard to connect to the Internet. On June 11, 2019, Dispatch announced it would sell its broadcasting assets, including the WBNS stations, to Tegna Inc. for $535 million in cash, a handsome return on its purchase of WBNS radio in 1929. Coinciding with WBNS TV's 70th anniversary, the deal ended the Wolfe family's involvement in local media after over a century. At the time of the sale announcement, channel 10 was the only major television station in Columbus still owned by Ohio based interests. The sale was approved by the FCC on July 29, 2019, and was completed on August 8. WBNS TV became Tegna's third television station located in Ohio, operating alongside fellow CBS affiliate WTOL in Toledo and NBC affiliate WKYC in Cleveland.

WBNS TV has strong ties to the athletic department of the Ohio State University. For many years, it has produced the coaches' shows for both the football and men's basketball teams, along with other shows about Ohio State athletics. Additionally, its radio sister has been the flagship station of Ohio State football and basketball for decades. Prior to the launch of the Big Ten Network in September 2007, the station aired Ohio State games offered by ESPN Plus in both sports, including prime time preemptions of CBS network programming for games. Because of the Big Ten Network's exclusive contracts to cover live Ohio State sports, WBNS now only carries selected CBS Big Ten basketball broadcasts on weekends and latter portions of the conference tourney, although the programming outside of live sports remains produced by WBNS TV; WSYX DT3 and WCMH TV currently air Ohio State football games through their affiliations with Fox and NBC and those respective networks' contracts with the Big Ten Conference. Since 2023, WBNS TV has carried select Ohio State football games through the Big Ten on CBS as part of the network's new deal with the Big Ten Conference.

WBNS presently broadcasts 37 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours each weekday, three hours on Saturdays and four hours on Sundays). WBNS TV was the first television station in the Columbus market to debut a news helicopter, "10TV SkyCam" (now "Chopper 10") in 1979, satellite news truck "10TV Skybeam" in 1986 and launch the Ohio News Network in 1997, which shared studio and office space with WBNS until ONN ended on August 31, 2012. Appropriately for a station with roots in a newspaper, WBNS TV had been a consistent ratings leader in programming and news for most of the time since records have been kept. In fact, for many years a popular saying in Columbus was "4 and 6 don't equal 10", referring to WBNS TV and its rivals, WLWC/WCMH TV (channel 4) and WTVN TV/WSYX (channel 6). Since the sale of the station to Tegna, however, WBNS TV's ratings have plummeted, with WCMH TV and WSYX battling for first, with WSYX edging out WCMH TV for the top spot. The first major challenge to Channel 10's dominance occurred in 1985, two years after WCMH began featuring the popular anchor team (and then married couple) of Doug Adair and Mona Scott. From then until the mid 2000s, WBNS TV and WCMH alternated holding the dominant ratings position for their 11 p. m. newscasts (and were virtually tied for ratings leads). However, since 2002, WBNS TV has returned to a dominant position due to stronger CBS programming and CBS' reacquisition of Sunday afternoon NFL telecasts. WBNS TV usually rotates games among the two teams with the largest followings in the Columbus market—the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns (both of whom are part of the CBS package for the American Football Conference). When possible, WBNS also airs games of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a division rival of the Bengals and Browns whose fan base extends into portions of the WBNS viewing area. During Super Bowl XLI, channel 10 debuted a large marketing campaign to promote the launch of 10TV News in high definition. The song "Carousels (Dreaming of Tomorrow)" by Columbus rock band Alamoth Lane was used throughout the course of the campaign. Some of the band members were shot playing on the roof of WBNS with the Columbus skyline behind them. The song was also used to promote sister station WTHR's 50th anniversary in 2007. The station began making preparations for the transition to HD in late March 2007, and debuted its 5 p. m. newscast in high definition on April 2, becoming the first television station in Central Ohio to produce newscasts in HD. The station's newscasts are now known as 10TV News; 10TV News HD was used from 2007 to 2012, after being known as 10TV Eyewitness News for many years. On November 7, 2008, WBNS TV's morning noon anchor Heather Pick died of breast cancer. Pick learned in 2004 that the disease she overcame in 1999 had returned. In her last public appearance, she hosted the "Spirit Celebration with Heather Pick", raising almost $500,000 for the Columbus Cancer Clinic. On January 3, 2011, WBNS expanded its weekday morning newscast to 21/2 hours, starting at 4:25 a. m. Weekend anchors Jeff Hogan and Angela An replaced Chuck Strickler and Anietra Hamper as anchors, and weeknight 5:30 p. m. anchor Tracy Townsend replaced Hamper and Strickler as noon anchors. On May 11, 2011, WBNS TV gained high profile advertising when WBNS logos and a news ticker replaced those belonging to WCMH TV on the Casto Building at the corner of High and Broad streets in downtown Columbus. Beginning in 2008, the building was leased by rival station WCMH TV to house its NBC 4 on the Square newscast. When WCMH discontinued the newscast, WBNS assumed the lease but decided not to utilize the street level studio space. On October 1, 2012, WBNS TV launched a redesigned set. On September 17, 2013, Maria Tiberi, the 21 year old daughter of WBNS TV sports director Dom Tiberi, was killed in a car accident along Interstate 270 in Hilliard. Although authorities stated that Maria was distracted at the time of the accident, they did not claim that the distraction was a cell phone. In honor of Maria, WBNS has launched a campaign known as "Maria's Message", an awareness program which aims to prevent such accidents from occurring. On April 8, 2014, the 130th Ohio General Assembly passed Senate Bill 294, which officially designated September as "Safe Driving Awareness Month" in honor of Maria. The bill was signed into law by Governor John Kasich in June of that year. In December 2019, the station named Ashlee Baracy as Chief Meteorologist, replacing Mike Davis, who was fired following his arrest on child pornography charges. On March 13, 2020, WBNS TV adopted Tegna's standardized news graphics and "C Clarity" theme, seven months after Tegna acquired the station.

WBNS TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 10, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre transition UHF channel 21, using virtual channel 10.

As of September 15, 2012, the high definition feed for WBNS TV was dropped from Dish Network due to a contractual dispute between the two sides. On September 6, 2017, WBNS and Indianapolis sister station WTHR, in both SD and HD formats, were pulled from their respective local AT&T U verse and DirecTV channel lineups in a dispute over retransmission licensing fees.